Buying Victory

(The above cartoon is by Adam Zyglis in The Buffalo News.)

Yesterday I remarked in a post that since Romney has been unable to win the hearts of Republican voters, he has decided to try and buy the election. I've also taken to calling him Wall Street Willie, because most of his money is coming from corporations and other denizens of Wall Street. Some of you may think I was joking. I wasn't. I believe both of those statements to be true.

Let us first examine the charge that Romney bought the victory in Florida. In South Carolina, the Romney forces spent only slightly more than the Gingrich forces -- and he lost by a large margin. It became obvious that Romney has not won the hearts of Republican voters -- far from it. And going into Florida after that crushing defeat, Romney found himself down significantly in the polls to Gingrich. What was he to do the regain the advantage?

What he did was outspend Gingrich by a four to one margin on TV advertising (with Romney and his super-PAC spending about $16 million, while Gingrich and his super-PAC could only muster $4 million). And 99% of that spending on behalf of Romney was on negative ads directed toward his major opponent, Gingrich. Romney literally carpet-bombed Gingrich with negative ads in Florida.

Did this huge amount of negative advertising have an effect on the outcome. Of course it did. Romney used it to turn a double-digit deficit into a double-digit win. This is verified by exit polling done by NBC News in Florida. About 71% of the Republicans polled said the TV ads were a factor in their decision on who to vote for, and 41% said it was an important factor.

And where did all the money come from to do that enormous spending in Florida. It came from Wall Street and other corporate entities. The financial services industry alone (Wall Street) has given Romney over $12 million -- more than twice what they have given to all other candidates combined (including President Obama). In fact, the Wall Street financial sector donated more that 20% of all the funds received by the Romney campaign in 2011. It's pretty obvious that the financial industry knows that if they could get Romney elected, it would mean a return to the "good old days" of "anything goes" for Wall Street (just like under President Bush).

And it wasn't just to the Romney campaign that Wall Street has been donating. They are also filling the coffers of his super-PAC. In just the last half of 2011, more than $18 million dollars were donate to the super-PAC -- by only 200 contributors. These are obviously not ordinary middle-class Americans making these huge donations. I wasn't joking at all by referring to Romney as "Wall Street Willie". He has been bought and paid for by Wall Street.

Now he takes that money to the caucus states of the next couple of weeks (and has already spent over $1 million in Nevada). It looks like Romney will just continue his "carpet-bombing" of his Republican opponents -- none of whom can come close to matching him in ad buys.

The only good thing about all of Romney huge spending to buy the Republican nomination is that the money spent now will not be available for the general election. And in the general election, he will not be facing an under-funded opponent. Obama raised $224.6 million in 2011. Romney cannot hope to raise enough money in his campaign to equal Obama's war chest. But Romney will have the advantage in outside spending. Karl Rove's PAC alone raised $51 million in 2011 and hopes to bump that to $200 million -- while Democratic PACs raised only about $19 million in 2011.

It's obviously going to be an expensive general election campaign. But it won't be as one-sided as the spending in the Republican primary campaign (where Romney has a huge financial advantage thanks to Wall Street).